I'm researching the history of holography - that is, the technology of creating
holograms, and the people who made them. The subject actually has been around
for quite a while. Holography was invented in England in 1947 as a way of
improving the images from electron microscopes. But in the early 1960s, when
lasers were invented, holography really took off. The three-dimensional images
from holograms seemed incredibly realistic and yet magical, even to the
scientists who created them. They also seemed full of potential. Military and
commercial funding skyrocketed.

What angle are you coming at the subject from? Is it technological, or were you
a sci-fi fan already?

The technology, and my background, are both relevant to this. I read science
fiction from the age of 10, starting with Ray Bradbury and Isaac Asimov, which
helped encourage me towards my original occupation as a physicist. But my
present research is part of what is nowadays called 'science studies' - the
history, sociology and philosophy of science and technology. I moved to science
studies because it tackled wider and more interesting questions about culture and
how we create new knowledge. This project isn't just technological - it also
concerns how artists, entrepreneurs, enthusiasts and writers have picked up
holography and tried to make it their own.

So when do HOLOGRAMS start showing up in science fiction? And how does that
relate to where the technology was in the real world?

The first holograms in SF seem to be simple extrapolations of the contemporary
state-of-the-art. In the early 1970s scientists and engineers were making
optimistic predictions. The SF versions were usually imagined to be some
form of optical projection, often scaled-down to show people in a format
rather like walk-around 3D television. A good early example is the hologram
projector in the original Star Wars movie.

SF is obviously known for playing on the zeitgeist - which uses of holograms
do you think have really come out of that?

That Star Wars example is a good one: it envisages the hologram to be more
or less as scientists of the 1970s imagined it would be 10 years hence. It
was 'viewed' very much as the newest cylindrical holograms of the mid-1970s
were, and imagined as a glorified television image. But more recent SF
portrayals stray far from that idea.

Mr Flibble's exact response - 'Huh?' - was not passed on to the doctor.
Andrew, fearing Mr Flibble would not understand much of this conversation,
handed the penguin some crayons and paper to play with. He then asked
Dr Johnston to chart the HISTORY of the hologram in sci-fi...

After Star Wars (written from 1973, and released 1977) the best-known on-screen
holograms are the 'holodeck' in Star Trek: The Next Generation (from 1987),
Red Dwarf's Rimmer (pilot written 1983, broadcast from 1988), Deep Space Nine
(from 1993) with 'holosuites', and Star Trek: Voyager's 'Emergency Medical
Hologram' (from 1995). All of these are very different from real-world
predictions.

Computer-generated holograms have been forecast since the 1960s, but demand
extensive calculations and are still extremely crude. The notion of
animated images viewable from any angle within a room is, of course, still
pure fiction. And the essential contradiction of an optical illusion that can
touch or be touched is part of its appeal as a device in science fiction.
Holograms also seem to have become popular in the last decade of comics, such
as [in some] Batman stories. I'm hoping that your readers can identify other
examples!

What do you see as Red Dwarf's major influences? And what areas do you think
it has itself influenced?

I'm intrigued by the chronology of Red Dwarf's holograms. They were more or
less contemporaneous with Star Trek: The Next Generation, which has rather
similar computer-generated holographic environments (the Holodeck), but preceded
Star Trek: Voyager, with its Emergency Medical Hologram (EMH), who is rather
like Rimmer. None of these ideas is a very obvious extrapolation of real-world
research, so I suspect that there has been a cross-fertilisation, presumably
from Red Dwarf towards Star Trek. The idea of a 'light bee' buzzing around
to project the image is rather like that taken up later in Voyager to explain
how the EMH in Voyager can leave his normal environment.

Mr Flibble muttered something about how 'contemporaneous' was clearly a
made-up word. Andrew told him to go back to his crayons. He then asked the
Doctor to predict the PREDICTIONS - what uses do you think we'll see for
holograms in SF in the coming years?

Predicting the predictions is fascinating stuff - it's the theme of a
third-year university course I teach with Dr Luc Racaut at the University of
Glasgow Crichton Campus, called Imagined Futures. There have been large-scale
cycles of prediction through the decades: science fiction during the Fifties
frequently cast the future as an extension of McCarthyite

Cold-War America, with ants (Them!) or monsters symbolising the communist
menace. The Sixties were more often simplistically optimistic about the future and
'progress' - think of 2001: A Space Odyssey or the technology programme
Tomorrow's World, still with us today. SF during the Seventies was more often
pessimistic (Soylent Green), and during the Nineties was fatalistic and
dismissive of technology (Blade Runner or Twelve Monkeys, for example),
forecasting misuse, abuse and breakdowns.

What's notable about holography is how poor the predictions have been! It
was a technology born in the 1960s, which meant that it was projected as
destined to be a wondrous tool within a decade or two: three-dimensional
movies, television and book illustrations, incredible data storage, new art
forms.

From today's perspective, what we have actually developed looks rather more
mundane: security foils for bank notes and credit cards, or children's sticker
books. Most people today think of holograms as kitsch, brightly-coloured but
hard-to-see images, because that's where most of the commercially important
applications are. So there has been a rupture between real-world predictions
and science fiction depictions.

Foolishly stepping out on a limb, I'd suggest that commercial holography will
continue to be dominated by security applications (stickers and the like) and
to remain important for engineering testing. With sufficiently powerful computers,
some limited holographic imaging may find a niche, but frankly there seem to
be easier low-tech ways of accomplishing most 3D imagery.

Which SF fiction do you think has proven especially good at predicting what
is to come?

Tracking predictions is fun, but it also suggests how difficult it is to be
prescient! I'd say that the most effective science fiction probably dates
from the period between its origins in the late 19th century and the Second World
War. During that time, there was a stronger cultural momentum pushing technology and
politics in particular directions, and some writers were able to use science fiction
to illustrate or even inspire those imagined futures.

One of the best-selling books in America around 1890 was 'Looking Backward:
2000 to 1887', written by the American Edward Bellamy. He conceived a kind of
socialist technological utopia, and one that a number of groups in America and
Europe tried to achieve in the decades that followed. H.G. Wells also
realised the power of mixing science fiction with political idealism. Some
of the zeal in pursuing atomic energy and rocketry can be attributed to that.
In today's post-modern world, though, I think it's more difficult for writers
to tap into a widespread zeitgeist because there seem to be many competing
options for the best version of a technological (or non-technological) future.

Red Dwarf seems to get the tone of the future right. The technologies of the
future won't seem amazing or liberating, and they probably won't work properly
much of the time. The inventions we use will depend as much on our whims and
fashions as on any built-in technical improvement. And the future will be
populated with a lot of flakey people pushing the buttons!

Mr Flibble held up his drawing - rather predictably, a picture of some
penguins. Andrew asked for five more minutes to let the grown-ups talk. What
are some of your favourite SF moments?

I like plot twists - the sort of thing that The Twilight Zone did well. My
favourite science fiction is the kind that triggers you re-evaluate your assumptions,
that reveals limited thinking. The final scene in the original Planet of the Apes
had that. Those aspects are what makes research in Science Studies so fascinating too.

Science fiction is also very effective for revealing new vistas - for that
awe-inspiring sense of the technological sublime. The space station on 2001:
A Space Odyssey is an example.

Finally, do you have any favourite moments from Red Dwarf?

Red Dwarf is superb precisely because it doesn't take all this too seriously.
Science fiction is too often earnest and full of itself. I like the general
spirit of the Red Dwarf series, which to me illustrates just how irrelevant
technology is to what matters in daily life. Inventions and people often interact
in unpredictable ways that defy analysis. Sometimes you just have to relax and
enjoy it.

Mr Flibble enjoyed talking to Sean Johnston, and now that it's over... Mr Flibble is very cross.

You can link to the Glasgow University website and find out more about the history of
holograms from our
Links Section.